Musings of a Canonical Engineerhttps://bigjools.wordpress.com
Sat, 31 Jan 2015 21:49:29 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngMusings of a Canonical Engineerhttps://bigjools.wordpress.com
New MAAS features in 1.7.0https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/new-maas-features-in-1-7-0/
https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/new-maas-features-in-1-7-0/#commentsMon, 13 Oct 2014 06:32:14 +0000http://bigjools.wordpress.com/?p=360]]>MAAS 1.7.0 is close to its release date, which is set to coincide with Ubuntu 14.10’s release.

The development team has been hard at work and knocked out some amazing new features and improvements. Let me take you through some of them!

UI-based boot image imports

Previously, MAAS used to require admins to configure (well, hand-hack) a yaml file on each cluster controller that specified precisely which OSes, release and architectures to import. This has all been replaced with a very smooth new API that lets you simply click and go.

Click for bigger version

The different images available are driven by a “simplestreams” data feed maintained by Canonical. What you see here is a representation of what’s available and supported.

Any previously-imported images also show on this page, and you can see how much space they are taking up, and how many nodes got deployed using each image. All the imported images are automatically synced across the cluster controllers.

Once a new selection is clicked, “Apply changes” kicks off the import. You can see that the progress is tracked right here.

(There’s a little more work left for us to do to track the percentage downloaded.)

Robustness and event logs

MAAS now monitors nodes as they are deploying and lets you know exactly what’s going on by showing you an event log that contains all the important events during the deployment cycle.

You can see here that this node has been allocated to a user and started up.

Previously, MAAS would have said “okay, over to you, I don’t care any more” at this point, which was pretty useless when things start going wrong (and it’s not just hardware that goes wrong, preseeds often fail).

So now, the node’s status shows “Deploying” and you can see the new event log at the bottom of the node page that shows these actions starting to take place.

After a while, more events arrive and are logged:

And eventually it’s completely deployed and ready to use:

You’ll notice how quick this process is nowadays. Awesome!

More network support

MAAS has nascent support for tracking networks/subnets and attached devices. Changes in this release add a couple of neat things: Cluster interfaces automatically have their networks registered in the Networks tab (“master-eth0″ in the image), and any node network interfaces known to be attached to any of these networks are automatically linked (see the “attached nodes” column). This makes even less work for admins to set up things, and easier for users to rely on networking constraints when allocating nodes over the API.

Power monitoring

MAAS is now tracking whether the power is applied or not to your nodes, right in the node listing. Black means off, green means on, and red means there was an error trying to find out.

Bugs squashed!

With well over 100 bugs squashed, this will be a well-received release. I’ll post again when it’s out.

]]>https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/new-maas-features-in-1-7-0/feed/0powermonbigjoolsNew image import configuration pageimage-importnode-start-lognode-start-log2node-start-log3networkspowermonEnabling KVM via VNC access on the Intel NUC and other hurdleshttps://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/enabling-kvm-via-vnc-access-on-the-intel-nuc-and-other-hurdles/
https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/enabling-kvm-via-vnc-access-on-the-intel-nuc-and-other-hurdles/#commentsThu, 08 May 2014 08:10:10 +0000http://bigjools.wordpress.com/?p=343]]>While setting up my new NUCs to use with MAAS as a development deployment tool, I got very, very frustrated with the initial experience so I thought I’d write up some key things here so that others may benefit — especially if you are using MAAS.

First hurdle — when you hit ctrl-P at the boot screen it is likely to not work. This is because you need to disable the num lock.

Second hurdle — when you go and enable the AMT features it asks for a new password, but doesn’t tell you that it needs to contain upper case, lower case, numbers AND punctuation.

Third hurdle — if you want to use it headless like me, it’s a good idea to enable the VNC server. You can do that with this script:

But there is yet another gotcha! The VNC_PASSWORD must be no more than 8 characters and still meet the same requirements as the AMT password.

Once this is all done you should be all set to use this very fast machine with MAAS.

]]>https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/enabling-kvm-via-vnc-access-on-the-intel-nuc-and-other-hurdles/feed/6bigjoolsRelapsed againhttps://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/relapsed-again/
https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/relapsed-again/#commentsMon, 05 May 2014 00:27:29 +0000http://bigjools.wordpress.com/?p=322]]>It seemed too good to be true after my last post, and it was. Within days I had relapsed after finishing the last course of Bactrim my symptoms were back, worse than ever. So bad, that I had a trip to hospital courtesy of an ambulance which had to be called because I was in so much pain. Oh sweet, sweet morphine, you are a cruel mistress.

The Bactrim was only holding the Bartonella at bay, it seems. My LLMD has now put me on a month’s worth of Ciprofloxacin, after verifying that a sore tendon was not too damaged. Why do that? Well, Cipro screws up tendons and ligaments if you take it too long so I had to verify that things were OK to start with. I also have to take it easy and not exert myself too much in case I damage weakened tendons.

The one piece of good news is that a recent endoscopy showed no fungal infection from all the antibiotics I’ve been taking. Unfortunately an echo test on my heart still shows a lot of fluid in the pericardial sac and I still have a huge amount of pain there which keeps me awake at night.

Because of all this, I am sad to be missing a work function in Austin this week, but it would have been foolish to travel with the tendon risk (moving my luggage would be a problem), my high levels of fatigue, and not to mention the pericardial fluid can become life-threatening at any time.

I’ve now been on treatment for Lyme disease for a little over twelve months. Without a doubt, this has been the worst twelve months of my entire life. It’s almost impossible to convey the range of pain that I have endured, the mental anguish, and the struggle to find the will to live.

Six months ago I was about at rock bottom. I was going trough herxes from hell, suffering from heart complications including cardiac pauses (my heart would stop for several seconds at a time), and headaches that felt like someone was driving a pick axe into my skull. Then there was the brain fog; the confusion and memory loss that left me feeling stupid and helpless in front of people who just didn’t understand how I could not remember simple things I had talked about with them only a few hours ago.

On top of that, I had extreme fatigue that left me unable to climb the stairs at home without stopping every few steps to get my strength back in my legs. Many of my days have been spent as a quivering mess on the floor, unable to speak, move or do anything because I was in so much pain and close to passing out.

In short, I was pretty fucked and thought I was about to die at any time.

Then I discovered an antibiotic that was actually making a difference to my heart symptoms—it’s called Bactrim (or Trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole to give it its full name). I started taking it in late December and two weeks later I was heart symptom free! The course of drugs then ran out (I had 4 weeks’ worth) and ten days later I had relapsed and was getting chest pains and palpitations again. I started another month’s course and felt better again after a couple of weeks, so it was clear that this drug was doing something to help me with my Bartonella infection.

It struck me that I have been so ill for a long time that I hadn’t really noticed that I was slowly getting better lately. At least I hope I am getting better — I’m now at a “wait and see” stage after having stopped the Bactrim for a second time and hoping to hell that I don’t have another relapse. I’m probably about 50% better than I was a year ago, I now have to wait for the last remnants of the Lyme and Bartonella bacteria to be driven out of my system.

]]>https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/true-words/feed/0bigjoolsIn uterohttps://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/in-utero/
https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/in-utero/#commentsTue, 15 Oct 2013 05:01:06 +0000http://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/in-utero/]]>My 2nd son (6 years old) tested positive on the Western Blot for Lyme. I was always a bit suspicious and now my fears are confirmed. He had a few signs, like dark circles around his eyes, a raging thirst all the time, and behavioural problems.

He is most likely to have got it in utero, which also probably means that my wife and our youngest two twins have it (they have dark circles under their eyes too). Thankfully my eldest seems asymptomatic.

Under advice from my doctor, I’m trying number two out with some Samento and Banderol. He says we should see an improvement in behaviour in 4-6 weeks and then we can consider moving on to antibiotics.

As for the wife – once I am stable we’ll try her out with some doxycycline to see if she herxes. We don’t want her debilitated by treatment at the same time as me…

]]>https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/in-utero/feed/2bigjoolsRifampicin continued…https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/rifampicin-continued/
https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/rifampicin-continued/#commentsTue, 15 Oct 2013 04:55:14 +0000http://bigjools.wordpress.com/?p=279]]>I have had a reasonable amount of success with the Rifampicin. My heart palpitations pretty much stopped over the course of a couple of weeks and stayed away until the end of that prescription. My doctor put me on a doubled dose for another 6 weeks so let’s see how that goes…

In the meantime, the palpitations came back a little. I’m not sure whether this is because I had a 4 day gap between courses or whether it’s part of a herx or otherwise caused by the increased dose.

I’m committed to flying across the Pacific at the weekend (I’m going to San Francisco for a week) — I hope I don’t get an attack on the plane :(

]]>https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/rifampicin-continued/feed/0bigjoolsRifampicinhttps://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/rifampicin/
https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/rifampicin/#commentsFri, 06 Sep 2013 12:34:23 +0000http://bigjools.wordpress.com/?p=277]]>Just started a new antibiotic called rifampicin. Getting an immediate and very powerful herx from it. Looking forward to another two week headache… :-/]]>https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/rifampicin/feed/2bigjoolsUnscheduled hospital visits…https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/unscheduled-hospital-visits/
https://bigjools.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/unscheduled-hospital-visits/#commentsThu, 15 Aug 2013 05:39:44 +0000http://bigjools.wordpress.com/?p=267]]>… yeah, so I had some really bad heart palpitations 2 nights ago and ended up calling an ambulance at 1am. This has been happening quite a lot in the evenings lately, but this time it was unbearably painful.

Long story short, seems like the bartonella is causing huge ectopic beats as it interferes with electrical impulses in the body. I’ll be seeing a specialist next week to see if I can find a way of minimising problems before starting rifampicin.